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You're on the road. The PowerBook freezes. You force a reboot and you get nothing but a flashing question mark. All your work's on your PowerBook. What now?
Welcome to a quick-and-dirty guide to getting your trusty PB back on the road again. It might cost you a couple of bucks (or deutschmarks, depending where you're coming from or going to) and a moment of time, but it'll be worth it.
Options of course vary widely across the PowerBook range as far as disk repair is concerned. Some have more bootable options than others. Duos, for example, are restricted without a Dock or an internal floppy drive. But here we'll canvass a range of options and see how to get your PB going again. The reason for this page is that by far the most frequent query I see on comp.sys.mac.portables and the PowerBooks and Vintage Macs (www.lowendmac.com) lists is 'how do I boot my Mac [insert model here] and reinstall a system'? This is especially the case where people bought a PB second hand and didn't get system software or boot disks/CDs with the Mac. So here's the guide.
1. How do I get and make a boot disk?
The 'new' Apple now provides a fair number of ways to boot your 'pute. The latest 'Lombard' G3 PowerBooks even permitt network booting. But we'll assume that this is for the lower-end user who hasn't just lashed out and bought one (and doesn't have a network in his/her suitcase).
For 68000-68030 PowerBooks (the 100-180c and Duo 210-270), you can download a bootable system direct from Apple. For the PowerBook 100, the 'Utilities' disk from System 7.0 should work (it's a System 6.08 disk, paradoxically enough). But unless you have net access, you can't get to it. The answer is: be prepared:
Download System 7.5.3 (free) from ftp.apple.com or the closest ftp site to where you are (e.g., ftp.euro.apple.com; ftp.apple.com.au). It's 19 disks so use somebody else's internet time (like the computer at work; you can justify it by saying you need your PB for the road, don't you?). Once it's download, launch the installer and go to 'Custom Install'. You'll get a range of options. Select 'Minimum System for this Macintosh'. Insert a floppy or select your hard drive. Select the floppy/hard drive and click 'Install'. In a few minutes you'll have a floppy-sized bootable system disk. Put the boot disk onto a floppy and test it out - better now than later. It should work fine.
2. What's on the floppy?
The bootable system should contain:
(i) a System folder
(ii) HDSC or Drive Setup
(iii) Disk First Aid
I usually dump HDSC or Drive Setup from the disk. You're not going to wipe your disk and start again and you don't want to accidentally. However, in cases where the hard disk driver may have become corrupted, you may need to update the driver. This won't erase anything but will install a fresh driver. HDSC (use v.7.3.5, the last one) updates SCSI hard drives only. So it will not work with the PB150 or any PowerPC PB. Use Drive Setup for these Macs. Current version is 1.7.2. Drive Setup can also recognise SCSI drives so you can use it on your earlier PB.
If you use a third party disk (say, you've upgraded your drive to a non-Apple one), it gets trickier. Drive Setup 1.7.2 usually recognises a lot of 3rd party drives these days, but not all of them. As a result, if you use FWB or something like that you may need to carry around an emergency FWB disk. But we're getting off the point here. If you're that sophisticated you probably don't need to read this guide.
HDSC and Drive Setup can also test your hard drive. It depends upon the size of the disk but it usually takes a few minutes. Problems are reported but sometimes there's precious little you can do about them without initialising (i.e. wiping the HDD). It tells you what might be up with your drive though.
Disk First Aid (DFA) verifies and repairs
your disk. Throw out the Disk First Aid that comes with 7.5.3 and download
DFA 8.2 from Apple. Yes, DFA 8.2 even works on the PowerBook
100. Later versions of DFA do not. Recent versions of DFA have improved
greatly their ability to repair disks. If you have a PowerPC PB using HFS+
(all recent G3 model PowerBooks come with their HDDs pre-formatted
with HFS+)
Can I repair my older PowerBook from a network?
Absolutely. With OS 7.5 in 1994, Apple released a boot disk called Network Access. Not as nifty as Netboot but does some of the same things. You'll have to hunt around for it as I don't have the URL handy. Use Fetch or Anarchie to search Apple's ftp site for it.
Network Access provides the ability to connect to a Ethernet or LocalTalk network via a floppy. This means you can connect via LocalTalk or with your built-in Ethernet or Ethernet card to a host network using only a floppy disk and your PB. Then you can make use of Norton Disk Doctor or whatever repair tools there are across a network! It may be a little slow, but it works. Network Access works with the following PowerBooks:
PB 100-180c; PB500 series; Duo 210-280c [with floppy adapter, mini-Dock or Duo Dock].
It does not work with the 190/5300, Duo 2300 or later. Nor does it work with PowerPC upgraded machines. All of these PBs require 7.5.2 or later. I have verified that using the extensions from this disk does not work with later versions of the Mac OS for later systems (7.5.2 etc.). Other methods of booting need to be utilised for more recent PBs.
How do I boot my Duo?
Duos are harder in the absence of a Dock, Mini-Dock
or Floppy Adapter. But there's a way around this - except you'll need a
bit of RAM to spare: create a RAM Disk. Here's how to do it:
What if DFA fails?
This is a not-uncommon occurrence. Occasionally, the disk's driver or directories are damaged badly enough that you get the message, 'Problems were found by Disk First Aid cannot repair them'. So then what?
That's why I recommend a boot disk - like a RAM
Disk - which contains alternative repair utilities. Unfortunately, however,
editions of Norton's do not fit on a floppy disk. Nor does Disk Essentials.
What about a Zip or Jaz backup?
In its IomegaWare 1.0 and later releases (this means the Tools software version 6.0 or later), Iomega provides the means in the Tools utilities to create a rescue disk. It take about 10 minutes as the software does a full surface scan of the Zip disk to verify the disk. It then loads the minimum OS software or a system of your choosing, plus your choice of disk recovery utility (it defaults to Disk First Aid). A standard backup of OS 8.6 plus DFA 8.5 takes about 15MB on the Zip. A 7.1 or 7.5 minimal system would probably take about 2MB.
For those of you with 190/5300 PowerBooks or
later - with an internal Zip drive - this is a very convenient solution.
But of course you can use an external Zip or Jaz via SCSI. Usually a PB
will refuse to boot from Zip, essentially because there's no Iomega driver
installed for it to recognise the drive. But Iomega's Tools software makes
the Zip 'bootable'. Even if you select a Zip/Jaz as a startup disk with
a system on it, under normal circumstances, the Mac won't boot from it.
You have to use the Iomega software to make the rescue disk.
Other external drives boot options
If you have an external or internal CD ROM drive in your PB, you simply boot from the System CD. Norton Utilities 4.0 also comes with a bootable CD. You can also make a copy of the System CD to take on the road by burning one on a CDR. So if you lose or otherwise destroy it, you haven't trashed your original CD.
If you have an internal CD ROM (PB1400 and later, 2400 excepted), hold down 'C' at startup to boot from the CD. If you're using an external CD ROM on a newer PB or an earlier PB (190/5300 or older), you need to hold down Apple-Option-Shift-Delete at startup.
The best - but the least portable - external boot drive is a SCSI hard disk. Using an HDI-30 peripheral cable (see PowerBook SCSI for more detail on this), connect up an external HDD with a system that supports your PowerBook. If your PB has a SCSI internal HDD, ensure the external drive has a different number. Most PBs will have a SCSI ID of 0 (zero). This will definitely be the case if the PB is factory original. Upgraded HDDs may have a different number (1-6).
150, 190/5300 PowerBooks and later use IDE internal HDDs. You can safely use an external drive with the SCSI ID 0 on these Macs.
Switch on the external HDD first, give it 15 seconds to boot up and then startup the PowerBook. If your internal HDD has crashed, the external will boot the PB automatically. If it's not and you want to repair it, hold down Apple-Option-Shift-Delete at startup.
All PowerBooks support this external boot option (as do all but the newest Macs). So it's worth investing in at least an HDI-30 cable to be on the safe side if you're travelling.
